Tandy Wilson
Chef Tandy Wilson’s name on a bill pretty much guarantees a big attendance from a food-loving crowd. The James Beard Award winner is known nationally for City House, the Nashville restaurant he opened a little more than 10 years ago. But when he stepped to the front of the room at a benefit for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition at Casa Azafrán in April, he didn’t want anything to do with the spotlight.
“This is Ruth Rico,” he said, gesturing to the woman beside him. “This dish is really all her.”
Then he handed her the mic.
Rico, originally from Colombia, shared the story of her empanadas-and-catering company Delicias Colombianas, which while lesser-known than City House, is part of what makes Music City’s food scene so great. Tandy’s cauliflower accompanied her empanadas that evening. Several other courses paired well-known chefs with immigrants and refugees, including Molly Martin of Juniper Green, who organized the event and worked alongside Arazoo Ibrahim to make Kurdish dolmas.
But the TIRRC dinner — called the InterNASHional Mash-Up — is one of many ways chefs have been using their unique positions to lift up minority voices, cook for causes they believe in and raise money for nonprofits. While chefs and restaurateurs have long been generous (and have long been asked for donations of gift cards, skills and time), their cooking for a cause feels personal and urgent these days. In 2017’s Feed the Resistance: Recipes + Ideas for Getting Involved, author Julia Turshen sums up how food is intertwined with hot-button issues of the day: “To think deeply about food is to also think deeply about the environment, the economy, immigration, education, community, culture, families, race, gender, and identity. Food is about people, all people.”
Rahaf Amer
On May 20 at The Café at Thistle Farms, chef Rahaf Amer of Salt & Vine will cook five courses for a dinner, called Food From Inside the Travel Ban, to benefit the nonprofit immigration law firm Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors. For Amer, the issue is deeply personal — her parents came here from Syria.
“Every single day of my life I ate hummus and pita bread,” says Amer. “Breakfast, lunch, dinner, it was always on the table. So we’re gonna start with some hummus and pita bread and biscuits and butter.”
Amer will also prepare her favorite Syrian dish from her childhood. Aromatic rice is the star of the dish, which is presented along with roasted chicken, but Amer will put a Nashville “hot” spin on it, amping the flavor up with Middle Eastern spices. It’s a combination of flavors and textures she grew up with, alongside a nod to the ones she’s learned to love since moving to Nashville three years ago. While she taught herself to cook by studying French and Japanese techniques (anything but Middle Eastern, she says, which she had on the regular at home), moving away from family made her curious about her loved ones’ past.
“I missed the food,” she says. “I didn’t have my dad making it for me. I found myself craving this and that, and would call my dad and say, ‘How do you make this?’ Those are probably the root and core flavors I had embedded in me, and now they’re finally coming out.”
Soon after President Trump announced his travel ban, which inspired the first edition of the Food From Inside the Travel Ban dinner in 2017, Biscuit Love owners Sarah and Karl Worley found another way to show support for refugees and immigrants. They spotted a sticker at Ticonderoga Club, a restaurant in Atlanta, that proudly welcomed all. “You are welcome here,” the sticker read. “Hate is not. People of every race, gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, faith, and nationality are welcome and safe in this business.” The Worleys reached out to the restaurant’s owners, who shared the sticker art with the Worleys. The Worleys made a batch of the stickers for their restaurants and to share with their friends at Josephine, Nicky’s Coal Fired and others.
“I think the restaurant industry in general is a place to see a lot of cultural and economic diversity, and I think it puts burdens on all of our hearts in a little bit of a different way,” says Sarah Worley. “You get to know, personally, people you might not have known otherwise.”
Worley says a person can’t walk into a restaurant in Nashville — or really anywhere — and not find an immigrant or someone who is a second-generation American working there. “I think we’re all affected by that story in one way or another, and I think we forget our roots at times,” she says. “We’re really trying to create an environment within Biscuit Love that’s inclusive, healthy, loving, caring and supportive. I don’t feel like any of that means anything if we don’t take it outside of our walls.”
But it’s not just immigrant and refugee causes the Worleys support. They donated half the sales from their charity T-shirts (“Love Biscuits, Love People”), about $3,000, to March for Our Lives, a nationwide student-led demonstration in support of stricter gun control. Each month, the Worleys and their staff decide which group will receive the T-shirt donation.
Sarah Worley also recognizes that the issues are complex and polarizing. She saw donating to March for Our Lives as a way to support a group of children who had been impacted by something really scary.
“I did worry about it,” she says when asked if she was concerned about upsetting customers by supporting March for Our Lives. “But we all have to stand for something. I don’t tell people they can’t come into my restaurant because they have different beliefs than I do. But I’m allowed to have mine.”
The upcoming Food From Inside the Travel Ban dinner likely won’t be the last food event in Nashville that offers ways to engage with political and social issues on a local level. Juniper Green’s Martin says she’s certainly open to another Mash-Up or other partnerships.
“There’s an urgency to some of the work of organizations like TIRRC, as the communities they serve are being actively threatened in a way that can feel personal to me and my colleagues,” Martin says. “The families being affected by these policies are close to us, have worked alongside us and helped us grow our business. This is the very least we can do.”
As for Salt & Vine’s Amer, she’s happy to have a way to give back in a situation that can feel hopeless otherwise. Though she spent much of her upbringing in Washington, D.C., Amer says she’s sad she’s not able to visit the country where her parents grew up.
“Again, this is a way for me to try to bring my culture here. And you can’t ban that.”
